


You Can't Know

by elle_stone



Category: Rent - Larson
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, HIV/AIDS, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-28
Updated: 2006-10-28
Packaged: 2017-11-05 01:30:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/400430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mark wants to tell him: there's nothing you can do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Can't Know

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2006, for challenge number 260, a story in which everyone's HIV status is altered, and which includes a proposal and a mention of wicker furniture, for the speed_rent community on livejournal.

Mark wakes up to the afternoon sun streaming in, harsh and bright, through the window. He squints as he opens his eyes.

 

Next to him the bed is empty, nothing but rumpled sheets and the smell of her shampoo on the pillow.

 

 

*

 

 

Roger gets up at dawn. Usually, to write his frantic songs in his frantic handwriting in his ripped and dog-eared notebooks. Sometimes, because he cannot sleep.

 

When Mark sees him, he is calm and quiet, drinking coffee and reading the paper, as if it were six instead of twelve. He smiles as Mark appears, rubbing his eyes and shuffling his feet.

 

“Glad you’re up,” Roger says. 

 

Mark doesn’t answer. He steals Roger’s coffee and Roger lets him. Roger passes Mark half of the paper. Outside, the weather is just beginning to warm. City sounds come in through the open window.

 

 

*

 

 

April used to be a groupie, and sometimes, they tease her. She has a sense of humor; she can laugh at jokes like that.

 

She has: red hair and a hundred thin silver bracelets and a bellowing, echoing laugh. She is: reckless and persuasive and funny and loud. She loves: Shakespearean sonnets and long guitar solos and the first bright flowers of spring.

 

Roger likes to say that he is in love with her. He says the words like they are new to him, some foreign language he has only now learned how to pronounce. He says the words like they amaze him. He smiles, when he talks about her.

 

 

*

 

 

Maureen cheats. Mark does not wonder about this, question this, doubt this.

 

He does try to guess, sometimes, what bothers him the most: that Maureen cheats, that he lets her cheat, or that everyone knows that she cheats, and does not care. It is accepted. It is only how Maureen is. It is nothing.

 

 

*

 

 

For one week, the hottest of that summer, Maureen goes missing. No one sees or hears from her for seven days.

 

When she calls, Roger is alone in the loft. Mark is at work. She does not want to speak to him. Roger listens to her voice, distant over the telephone lines, and stares at one of the band posters he has put up. He stares until the words and the images are meaningless, and then he hangs up the phone.

 

There is a note, on the kitchen counter, when Mark returns home.

 

Maureen says get tested. R.

 

 

*

 

 

The dream takes place in winter, in his grandmother’s house. Not the house she lives in now, in Florida, with the bright wallpaper and the wicker furniture, but the one she used to have, half an hour from his parents’ house, where the Cohens would gather for all the major holidays. Mark is nine. The phone rings and he answers it but he cannot hear a word the other person is saying. Whoever-it-is is yelling, but he is very far away.

 

Just before he wakes up, he hears.

 

You could have saved yourself if you had just heard me in time.

 

 

*

 

 

The first day of August, the weather starts to break. It rains for hours without stopping. Mark comes home at dusk, the sky a darkening gray outside the window, and Roger leaning, statue-like and still, against one of the pillars in the loft.

 

Mark closes the door behind him. Roger doesn’t ask him, and Mark doesn’t tell.

 

Roger is holding a small, square, black jewelry box. He moves it back and forth between his hands. He stares at it, as if it were the only thing that mattered. Finally, he pops it open with a short, hollow, sound, and holds it out for Mark to see.

 

The ring is small, but pretty, shining even in the dull light.

 

“What do you think?” Roger asks.

 

Mark’s only answer is silence, silence to say that he doesn’t think, he can’t.

 

“It’s the best I can afford,” he continues. “Do you think she’ll like it?”

 

Maybe things could have happened differently. Maybe he could have had a different fate. But he cannot change things now, and now, when he speaks, his voice is soft.

 

He asks, “Does it matter?”

 

“Mark—”

 

“Does it matter, Roger? Tell me, does it matter if she likes it, if she hates, if she even says yes? Do I care? I have AIDS and you’re showing me a stupid ring!”

 

Roger does not answer. 

 

Roger does not answer. 

 

Roger does not answer until he finds the voice to say he is not sorry. Then he walks to the window, steps out onto the fire escape, and throws the ring out into the street. 

 

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Mark tells him.

 

And he answers, “I know.”

 

 

*

 

 

Six hours later, Mark wakes up to a dark shadow sitting on the end of his bed. He watches. He waits. Finally, a whisper comes.

 

“What can I do?”

 

Mark wants to tell him: nothing. But he doesn’t. He says, “Roger,” and, “please.”

 

Roger’s shadow shifts. “I know. Just—wait.”

 

Mark waits, but nothing happens. Roger climbs over his feet and lies down on Maureen’s side of the bed. And Mark waits. He listens for something to break the silence. He waits. He looks for something to hide the fear coursing through him. He waits. He drifts off, waiting for Roger’s breathing to slow.


End file.
